for it. In almost every act we do with both hands, each has a
separate office to which it is best fitted. Take, for example, so simple
a matter as buttoning one's coat, where a curious distinction between
the habits of the sexes enables us to test the principle with ease and
certainty. Men's clothes are always made with the buttons on the right
side and the button-holes on the left. Women's, on the contrary, are
always made with the buttons on the left side, and the button-holes on
the right. (The occult reason for this curious distinction, which has
long engaged the attention of philosophers, has never yet been
discovered, but it is probably to be accounted for by the perversity of
women.) Well, if a man tries to put on a woman's waterproof, or a woman
to put on a man's ulster, each will find that neither hand is readily
able to perform the part of the other. A man, in buttoning, grasps the
button in his right hand, pushes it through with his right thumb, holds
the button-hole open with his left, and pulls all straight with his
right forefinger. Reverse the sides, and both hands at once seem
equally helpless.

It is curious to note how many little peculiarities of dress or
manufacture are equally necessitated by this prime distinction of right
and left. Here are a very few of them, which the reader can indefinitely
increase for himself. (I leave out of consideration obvious cases like
boots and gloves: to insult that proverbially intelligent person's
intelligence with those were surely unpardonable.) A scarf habitually
tied in a sailor's knot acquires one long side, left, and one short one,
right, from the way it is manipulated by the right hand; if it were tied
by the left, the relations would be reversed. The spiral of corkscrews
and of ordinary screws turned by hand goes in accordance with the
natural twist of the right hand: try to drive in an imaginary corkscrew
with the right hand, the opposite way, and you will see how utterly
awkward and clumsy is the motion. The strap of the flap that covers the
keyhole in trunks and portmanteaus always has its fixed side over to the
right, and its buckle to the left; in this way only can it be
conveniently buckled by a right-handed person. The hands of watches and
the numbers of dial-faced barometers run from left to right: this is a
peculiarity dependent upon the left to right system of writing. A
servant offers you dishes from the left side: you can't so readily help
yourse